Transportation

Feds ask Waymo about robotaxis repeatedly passing school buses in Austin

Transportation /

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has asked Waymo for more information about its self-driving system and operations following reports from the Austin School District that its robotaxis illegally passed school buses 19 times this year. In a December 3 letter sent to Waymo, regulators requested detailed information about its fifth-generation self-driving system and operations. […]

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Musk says new Tesla software allows texting and driving, which is illegal in most states

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in an X post Thursday that owners can text and drive with the latest version of his company’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) driver assistance software, despite the fact that it’s illegal to do so in most states. Musk replied to another user who had noticed the newest update to the software,

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California’s ban on self-driving trucks could soon be over

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California regulators have released revised rules that would allow companies to test and eventually deploy self-driving trucks on public highways. The California Department of Motor Vehicles, the agency that regulates autonomous vehicles in the state, opened up a 15-day comment period for the proposed revisions that ends December 18. California is home to numerous companies

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Autolane is building ‘air traffic control’ for autonomous vehicles

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The rapid succession of robotaxi deployments from companies like Waymo and Zoox have people in the industry, once again, dreaming about how autonomous vehicles might change our daily lives. That includes driverless taxi rides, sure, but also headier ideas like sending an autonomous vehicle to fetch groceries or pick up dry cleaning. If those things

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Behind the scenes of drone food delivery in Finland

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Finland’s weather is notoriously unfriendly; but even so, your food order might be delivered by a drone. On a rainy day after Helsinki’s annual Slush conference, Finnish entrepreneur Ville Leppälä took TechCrunch behind the scenes of a three-party partnership between Irish drone delivery company Manna, DoorDash-owned food delivery platform Wolt, and his own startup, Huuva.

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Airbus orders software fix to thousands of planes due to solar radiation risk

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Flights were delayed and cancelled globally after Airbus ordered fixes to 6,000 of its A320 series planes, according to The Guardian. The company said it’s taking action because “analysis of a recent event involving an A320 Family aircraft has revealed that intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical to the functioning of flight controls.” Citing

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Redwood Materials reportedly cuts 5% of staff after $350M raise

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Fresh off a $350 million raise, battery recycler and cathode-maker Redwood Materials is reportedly cutting around 5% of its workforce, according to Bloomberg News. Nevada-based Redwood employees around 1,200 employees, so the cuts affect a few dozen workers. The company, founded in 2017 by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, initially focused on recycling scrap from

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GM tech executive shakeup continues on software team

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The software team at General Motors has now lost three top executives in the past month as the automaker — with its new chief product officer at the helm — combines its disparate technology businesses into one organization. Baris Cetinok, senior vice president of software and services product management, is leaving the company effective December

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